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this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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It's strange really. You can buy 4 extremely good indie games for the price of one game. And that's at a 20 each.
And with steam sales and sharing...valve is fun.
Trying to raise the "standard" price to $80 will have very nice ripple effects of more pricing diversity, where each game will really consider what it's actually worth, which we haven't had for a long time. Even now we're getting first-party Microsoft titles releasing at $20, $30, and $50.
I think all it will do is raise the ceiling of what publishers are willing to price games at. If they think they can get away with it, they'll charge $80 instead of $70, with the rest being $70 and less just like it already is now.
Steam doesn't advertise at the scale of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. It won't have a ripple effect because it won't change the degree to which artificial hype drives people towards the "Buy" button.
A lot of games priced at $70 right now are having a rough go of it, so charging more on top of that isn't going to help, but there are the likes of South of Midnight and Clair Obscur launching at $50. If your game isn't as hot of a commodity as Mario Kart, you're probably going to try to lure people in with a lower price.
Beautiful games, both. But again, they aren't having the full court press of advertising like a new Call of Duty or Final Fantasy or Diablo would.
That's the real cost savings. You don't need to change $80+ for a game if you aren't focused entirely on presale figures to justify your studio's budget.
Incidentally, you also get to focus on a better game. Balatro didn't need wall to wall subway ads in New York to end up on everyone's phones.
Steam doesn't need to. It's got the steam sale and a hundred million people to share memes of "sale so good spent all my money no time to play all the games I bought in such massive sale"
You don't need to promote if everyone else does it for you lol.
How much is Factorio worth though, everything?
The amount of time I've put in it could have cost me $200 and it would still be one of the best $/hr games I have
I bought it long before the steam release, back when multiplayer was in experimental. So glad that there are 1000s of hours that were never tracked so I don't need to see those.
If they charged according to value no one on Earth could afford to buy it
you dont own those games brotherman
Not ALL steam games have DRM. Yes, you should buy from GOG whenever you can, but if you use Linux like me, GOG doesn't give a shit. It can be hard to decide, support DRM free games and proper ownership with GOG, or expanding compatibility with Linux and improve it in general. If its cheaper on steam cause of a sale or something, I'll buy on steam, then years later like with DOOM 2016 for example, I'll buy it when it hits like 4 bucks on gog. That way, I have acces to an offline installer, and I show support and interest to valve for investing in proton.
Another option is to buy through Heroic Games Launcher. Heroic gets a cut, and GOG sees what they'd have to do to earn your entire dollar.
Completely forgot about that, I do really like the Heroic Launcher.
What? You can buy gog games through heroic?
Yeah, it just launches a web browser in the client, but behind the scenes, it's using a referral code in partnership with GOG to make sure they get a cut. So you can support DRM-free and Linux gaming support at the same time.
Oh shit I had no idea. If I didn't buy so many on my phone I'd be doing this. Next time I'm buying gog on my deck, it's through heroic.
thanks for spreading the word
looks like the solution i needed for all the smaller more useless launchers. wich it included connectability to ea/ubi/battleNet's launchers too
Xbox for example seems more solid to me as a gamerscore addict for example. Steam obviously the main standard you wouldnt want to compress
I'd almost argue the same with modern consoles with all the crappy digital bullshit and planned obsolescence
Your not wrong. If it weren't for steam being absolutely stellar than I wouldn't be buying games from them. I would try to go through gog. But with their work on proton alone I personally give them a pass.
To run the games i wanna play would require a pc worth 3 ps5s
Edit: people here don’t like facts, but where I live a pc that matches a ps5 is around $1500+ it you’re lucky. Yes your pc is better than my ps5 in the same way that your Ferrari is better than my Honda. But I like Hondas.
You can also tweak the graphics settings and get a budget PC.
Again, no. Why not just get a ps2? I want current gen games and I know that for this to be comparative on pc it costs nearly triple
I'm playing current Gen games on my steam deck and my 2019 PC build.....
You can play other games, there is so much to choose from just drop the expensive ones.
Again no, that’s not my taste. I’m just saying steam doesn’t work for most people. The convenience of a console alone is always gonna keep me. To know i can buy a game 5 years after the console is released and it’ll run. PC gaming is superior, but it costs way more and takes way more work. Im it’s not convenient for casual people like me, especially since I want to sit on my couch with a controller and not have to interact with a computer
*laugh sitting on the couch playing PC games off steam using a tv to display and a wireless controller
What are you even talking about ..enjoy paying more for less, and paying monthly to play games while also being locked to whatever terms they decide all willy nilly.
Steam doesn't work for most people? You sure about that? It has 132 Million active users, that's nearly double the number of PS 5s that have been sold!
Very odd comparison, you need to buy a ps5 to be a ps5 user, you don’t need to buy anything to be a steam user, you just need to sign up and you’re considered a user.
Not really. There are more people using Steam than own a PS5 or Xbox X. So in what reality does Steam "not work for most people"?
You'll note that I used Steam's ACTIVE user statistic. That's not people who just "signed up", those are people playing games on Steam.
Steam works just fine for most people.
If you can afford the cost of console game prices, more power to you. They're pricing me out and I know I'll have no choice but to switch to PC in the future if I want to be able to keep playing games.